My sleep was light and uneasy. Indeed, I dreamt of lying awake. If you have never done that, be glad; it is as bad as dreaming of getting up again and again until you are ready to stay in bed when morning finally comes.
I dreamt that I lay by my little fire, which smoldered; I dreamt that I tossed and turned and I knew I did neither; I dreamt I fed the fire and tossed again …
I dreamt I was not alone.
Something colorless and shapeless moved outside the perimeter of my Circle. In my dream I sat up and watched it. It was interested in me; I felt that clearly. The interest was not that of the predator in the prey, of the hunter in its next meal, but an attentive curiosity.
“You are Gwydion of Argylle,” it said.
I stiffened, surprised at being addressed. “Yes,” I said.
“We are the Battlemaster. It is vital that we contact your father Gaston the Fireduke, but we cannot find him. We request assistance.” The insubstantial thing paused near me in its walking around my circle. I regarded it, puzzled, and it seemed to gather power unto itself and became a more-perceptible blot in the darkness.
“The Battlemaster?” The name was foreign to me in sound and meaning. It didn’t sound pleasant, however; it sounded like a name of someone who wished to pick a fight or finish one.
The thing said, “Ah. You may know us as Thiorn. Thiorn is one of our faces. Thiorn is a part of our identity. Battlemaster was Freia’s word for part of what we are, in your language.”
Was this really Freia’s friend, whom I knew of only by name, from some highly mechanized culture Freia had lived in long ago? My memory jigged. Thiorn. Freia had gone to visit Thiorn, before her death. They collaborated on genetic investigations and constructions, and Thiorn had commanded the armies of Argylle during the Independence War. “I can’t help you. He’s not talking to anyone,” I answered, wondering what this had to do with Gaston.
Its, or their, voice was neutral, genderless, and soundless. I heard it in my head without the stirring of air to carry the sound to me. “He is not dead,” they said.
I shrugged. “Alive a few months ago.”
The Battlemaster continued to watch me. My circle had not reacted to their presence. “On what matter do you seek him? Is it one in which I may be of aid?” I asked.
“Possibly. Possibly. You are the nominal head of your family in his absence?”
“I suppose Prospero really is, but officially it’s me.”
Another silence. “The business touches Freia’s death,” the thought unspoken came.
Caution … I knew little about this asker … “I was there, yes.”
“Good. She is dead?” they pressed.
“Twenty years and more.” And still we miss her, I thought.
“Aha,” or that sort of sentiment. “Describe the manner of her passing. Omit nothing.”
“Beginning where?”
“Just the manner of her passing. We care not for your history.”
I wondered how much the Battlemaster, or Thiorn, knew about us, and I gave a factual bare-bones answer. “She was thrown into the Spring of Argylle and it … destroyed her.”
“The Spring destroyed her. You are not telling us something.”
This was highly inconvenient. “I really cannot tell you more.” I tried to suppress my thoughts.
“Do not trouble yourself,” came the rejoinder. “We are just checking our facts, not probing.”
“What’s going on?”
“We really cannot tell you more.”
Now I thought. Freia and Thiorn had been very close by all accounts. She had trusted her, or them it seemed. I just knew the name, not much more; Thiorn had been her general and ally in the Independence War, and the two of them had worked together on genetics; that certainly must mean Mother had been intimate with them.
They hadn’t gone away; they were waiting, and I appreciated their courtesy in allowing me to think about how ready I was to trust them. “All right,” I said. “The Spring absorbed her as it destroyed her. She is part of it now.”
“It is an energy construct.”
I had not thought of it thus before, but I supposed that was one way of seeing things. “That is essentially correct. Now what is afoot?”
A mental sigh—peculiar. “Someone has been rifling the Tamackay information banks.”
“Information banks?”
“Storage of information about individuals who have had Tamackay therapy. Accelerated, controlled regeneration for the replacement or repair of damage to the physical body. Using means we associate with your kind, someone has extracted information about Freia. We were able to detect but not to prevent the violation.” A pause. “You have conjectures. Please share them.”
A meteoric flash of suspicion and intuition arced through my mind. I had conjectures. I also had loyalties. “What would you do to this individual or individuals?”
“Discipline the criminal. Confiscate the information. It is confidential. It is not to be used without the owner’s consent.”
“We’re talking about genetic information of some sort?” This was Freia’s bailiwick; she had been fascinated by biology and her studies in genetics had been deep and ongoing.
“Correct. Genetic information describing Freia, such that it can be used to reconstruct her body. The mind, naturally, is another matter.”
My suspicions became more solid, acquired a name and a sketchy outline—more substantial than my visitor. “Hell. Are you sure it’s no one there?”
“We are certain,” came the amused thought. “We would hardly expend the effort otherwise. This is costing us planets and suns.”
“Why did you want Gaston?” I wondered.
“Under our law, her next of kin must decide the disposition of the information and must be informed of the violation.”
It sounded legitimate. “Please promise me there will be no harm done to the culprit.”
“You desire to shield this person? We begin to understand. We promise, with the proviso that if some … misapplication has occurred, we may take what measures we deem appropriate.”
“Misapplication?”
“Genetic abuse.”
I couldn’t imagine what that would entail, but I thought I was probably against it. I said, “Very well. That is acceptable, and in that case I will help you.”
“Agreed. Whom do you suspect?”
“Her brother, Dewar …” I hardly knew how to phrase it. “I think he is determined to free her from the Spring. It can be done by one of us killing himself or herself in Freia’s place, providing a body for her. I’d guess he must be trying to work something out. Somehow. You did mention something about replacement of physical bodies …”
“Dewar.” The mental tone was thoughtful.
“They were close. He went a little wild when she was killed.”
Thinking, thinking—activity just a little too muted to come to me clearly. “We cannot maintain this contact much longer. Please come to Kavellron.”
“I don’t know where it is.” Kavellron? A city? A country? A bar?
“You can find us.” There came a feeling of snapping, as of an elastic overtaxed and returning to its own shape, and the Battlemaster was gone.
And I woke, a curious awakening, for on one level I felt my body sitting upright suddenly, staring around in the cold empty dark before my eyes had even opened properly, and on the other I sat as I had for the entirety of our conversation, looking at the place where the colorless, shapeless thing had been.
Hussy stood, staring at that spot, on the opposite side of the circle.
Was it a dream?
Just in case, knowing the fleeting nature of such, I opened my saddlebag, took out a little notebook and a pencil, and scribbled down the outline of the conversation. I tossed another piece of wood or the fire and observed that no wood was missing from my pile. The wood I put on hardly burned at all; it wouldn’t catch. I tried another piece and that one flared up brightly, resin in the wood popping.
Kavellron.
That was what made this dream, or sending, a little, tiny bit convincing.
Kavellron was a name I had never heard before. Thiorn, or the Battlemaster, was. Thiorn’s name appeared in chronicles of the Independence War, which were so obviously censored that there was no point asking Freia or Belphoebe what had been left out. I had asked Belphoebe exactly that once, and she said, “What is there is the record.” The Battlemaster was supposed to be the greatest military intelligence in existence.
And this also made my dream a little unconvincing too. I annotated the description of it: Here I am, preoccupied with a serious Argylline problem, and my subconscious not only pops out a name associated with Argylle’s great victory against a supposedly-invincible opponent (Landuc, then) but also suggests that my mother might be reincarnated. Wish fulfillment!
“Take a rest, brain,” I muttered, looking at my notes on the conversation. It was a rescue fantasy: that some miraculous ally would appear from nowhere and save me from the dragon.
Still. Kavellron. My mind usually did not invent nonsense words like that. And something about the context rang curiously true, although I had no evidence to support my guess that Dewar was slaving over a hot microscope (or whatever) somewhere, trying to build his sister a new body …
Ridiculous!
Yet … the Battlemaster … there was a real entity …
I reread my notes again, and the smallest uncertainty wove itself through my heartstrings.
Sendings can take many forms. I knew that the methods used in Argylle and Landuc and commonly in Noroison were not the only way of handling them. Perhaps this was a legitimate Sending of a nonconventional variety.
Perhaps pigs have six legs and wings too.
It’s possible that somewhere they do, I countered my skeptical self.
I tapped the end of the pencil against my notebook and thought without structure, letting the whole business swirl around in my mind and settle into a decision. Then I put the notebook away, pulled my cloak around me, and snuggled back down onto the hard and cold ground to pursue the rest of my sleep.
17
IN THE MORNING I SADDLED HUSSY and got going fast, eating a couple of apples by way of breakfast. I returned to the Road and travelled slowly toward the Border, musing over my experience of the previous night. I had a strong urge to follow it up. This urge, I fully admitted to myself, was partly born of my desire to do anything but deal with the dragon Gemnamnon. The question was, how good an idea was it to pursue this now? What did Dewar intend? Was it so urgent that I ought to shirk the dragon problem?
That must be determined by what I found at the Border and in Argylle. My first responsibility was to my realm. Then I could engage myself with the problem of how to contact an entity about which I knew nothing in a place whose location was completely unknown to me. I did not even know on which side of the Border it lay.
So Alexander’s excellent horse and I cantered on toward the Border. I put aside thoughts of Dewar and Mother and what-if, and I considered instead the lack of sorcery in the Border area. It is a dead zone, or nearly; the conditions that inhibit sorcery mean also that only the simplest technologies function. Mother had been an expert on it, because in her younger days she had spent much time there. She had even written up her notes in neat, usable form, a set of maps and guidebooks. Unfortunately, her lack of either interest or training in sorcery meant that she had not investigated that basic problem. Perhaps Dewar had, but he’d not mentioned it to me.
I had always accepted it as a limitation and never concerned myself with it; the Border was there to be crossed, sometimes to be travelled for a few days with a caravan, once in a great while to be visited for longer if one of the traders invited one to stay. Now I saw it as a gaping lacuna in my education. How was I to rule Argylle if I understood almost nothing of the fundamental nature of an integral part of the realm? For example, how could the Border exist at all if it were not part of the Spring? How was it that an initiate of Landuc’s Well could not pass beyond the mountains on that side? Where did the Border come from? What was there before there was Argylle? Nothing?
Philosophical questions like this are another way of not facing problems. I suppressed mine regretfully and forced myself to think about Gemnamnon.
I had to either come up with something so powerful he would respect it and leave us alone forever, or I had to destroy him with something so powerful he couldn’t beat it. Figuring that out was the easy part. The difficult part was producing the device. I fretted over the problem afresh until I was once again running around it in decreasing circles, and then I gave it up in frustration. I would consult Prospero and Belphoebe when I got home. Perhaps they could help. Alexander, with a certain schadenfreude, had indicated he considered it my problem entirely, so I wouldn’t bother asking him this time. Let him look after Ulrike for the nonce.
Having succeeded in buying myself time, I stopped for lunch at a dark stream ford and crossed it after making the appropriate answer when challenged by the black-armored knight who waited at the other side: one of the nastier Gates. Then I continued on the Road to the Border.
It took another three days for me to reach the Border. I performed a brief Lesser Summoning for Walter each night, and each night he reported nothing new, no dragons, no supernatural gryphons. Prospero had come to Argylle again, he said.
I took precautions when I did this to ensure that detection of the spell at either side would be difficult, fearing that Gemnamnon might be monitoring me—I had no idea, after all, what his capabilities really were. Each evening I laid me down well-warded, and each night I slept undisturbed until morning, and each morning I saddled and mounted and rode away. The journey had lost all feeling of fun and holiday. It was part of my job now. There was no time for side-tripping, for exploration and impulse.
I stopped for the night at a hut which had been tenanted the previous night (judging from its condition) but which was mine alone now. A sound from the roof made me jump and flinch with a quick gripping of fear in my bowels, and then I cursed my nerves and laughed at myself.
It was Virgil, looking rather the worse for wear and very glad indeed to see me. I lifted him down from the eaves and petted him and carried him inside. I had assumed that, following the encounter with the dragon and the Gryphon, he would make his way home to Argylle and abide my coming there. But no, he had continued on the path I had chosen, toward Montgard, and then stopped here out of weakness because he had obviously had poor luck in the hunt. I scolded him and fed him and talked to him for a couple of hours, telling him what had befallen me since we had parted company, and he listened, as owls do, with his eyes mostly shut and his beak deep-sunk in his fluffy breast.
“So what do I do now?” I asked him. “How am I going to kill that monster? And this business with the Battlemaster and Dewar and Mother sounds like it might be urgent too. What do you think? I cannot do both at once.”
Virgil pondered it awhile. I fed the fire profligately and warmed my feet.
Finally Virgil drew himself upright and shook out his feathers. He climbed up my arm to my shoulder and deftly pulled my Keys, which I carry when travelling on a chain around my neck, out of my shirt. Then he jumped down to my knee and selected one, offering it to me gravely.
“Mother?”
Virgil waited, staring at me orb-eyed.
I took the Key. “Mother is more important than the dragon?” My voice rose with incredulity.
He nodded twice, a very enthusiastic endorsement coming from him.
I shook my head. “That dragon is killing people, Virgil. I disagree with your priorities, and I think she would too.”
Virgil turned his back and hunched his shoulders.
“Sorry,” I said, “but I have a responsibility to the living as well as the dead, don’t I?”
Nothing but a stiff little owl, ignoring me.
“Hmph,” I said, annoyed, and pushed him off my knee; he flipped his wings and
perched on the woodpile, and I shook out my cloak and wrapped it around my body and lay down.
No sorcerer can afford to quarrel long with his familiar. I had asked the opinion of mine and he had given it to me. I lay, eyes closed, weighing things again in my thoughts.
“Virgil,” I said quietly after half an hour or so, “I don’t like running away from things like this. It’s not right. I owe a duty—”
He scared half the life out of me by jumping on my chest and grabbing for my Keys again.
“I get the message! Mother is important! Is she so much more important than everyone else?”
He chose two Keys and offered me them in his left claw—Mother’s and my Master Key.
I looked at them a long time.
“She is that important,” I said.
He nodded once, dropped the Keys, and returned to the woodpile.
Indeed! I lay back again myself and rolled onto my stomach. The heat of the fire felt good on my side.
Someone had stolen, the Battlemaster had said, genetic information. Information that could be used to construct a body, they had said. I thought I knew who would do that and why: Dewar, trying to bring Freia back to life. But how could it be done? It seemed impossible to me, the most unnatural and awkward transition imaginable—from some kind of coded information to a person.
It made no sense. It would be better, I thought, to use an existing body. Like Ulrike’s. I wondered, if Gaston were given the choice, what he would prefer: to have his wife again, or their immature and timorous daughter? He had been numb and distant after Mother’s death, drawn into himself, cold ashes and charred old wood. What comfort could Ulrike be when he had lost the one he loved best?
Dewar, I thought, loved her as well. I had never realized how much until I had heard him speak to her image in the Spring just after her death, storming, his grief overflowing and drowning every other idea but that he wanted her back at any price. If it were possible to restore her to a body, he would do it for her—steal, lie, perhaps even murder.
The Well-Favored Man Page 28